Anyone who is traveling on Plieninger Straße in Poing near Munich may have seen an XXL-format FDP election poster at the level of the railway underpass in the past few days. So far nothing special, after all, there are state elections in Bavaria next Sunday. Only those who use the poster in a friendly way to get votes are something special: it is neither the Bavarian FDP top candidate Martin Hagen nor the FDP candidate for the Ebersberg constituency Marc Salih, who is himself a Poinger. Instead, it is Stefan Naas, FDP top candidate in Hesse, where the election will also take place on Sunday. The Bild newspaper first reported on it.
Marc Salih laughs about it on the phone on Friday morning. “I see it with humor,” says the 49-year-old, “wherever there are people, mistakes sometimes happen.” Apparently the posters were swapped at a service provider responsible for the billboards. “So it wasn’t the case that someone from the FDP district association brought the poster with them from their vacation in Hesse and hung it up with us – we would have to be a little worried about that,” Salih continues and laughs.
Actually, his Bavarian party colleague and FDP top candidate Martin Hagen, who lives just a few kilometers away in Vaterstetten, should have campaigned for votes at the location, as Salih says. He also sees the mix-up with humor. The 42-year-old wrote on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) on Thursday: “Stefan, you now owe me an Äppelwoi for that!”
Marc Salih himself hasn’t even seen the Hessian party colleague’s poster in his hometown – the federal police officer is currently on a business trip. He sees the swapped poster as an interesting experience, “I was a bit surprised that it was picked up in the media like that,” he says. On the other hand: “Nothing like this…” – and the 49-year-old laughs again – “… has probably never happened before.”